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Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Petronas Interview+Educamp 2012

Nothin' much, just wanna tell you about the Eduquest Petronas I attended in April.

It was a 2-days camp. I knew a lot of friends from TNB educamp who were also gonna come to UTP for the Educamp / Eduquest. (Yup, I met Mujahid, Khai, Ismat, and Yasir)

Well, we have to keep trying, right? It's not like we are certainly gonna get the one that we applied for. Or, if we did get one but it wasn't something we actually want, so is it wrong to try out??
The thing is I just feel upset with certain people - the way they think, the way they want to mould MY FUTURE in a way they think is good enough. OK, stop. Anyway, 'they' I referred to are not my family.

We applied and checked for our Eduquest status at http://spmonline.petronas.com.my
Mine was for petroleum engineering(P.E.) My first choice ^^

So, the camp was in UTP, Perak but we stayed in a quite comfy hostel in Uitm Seri Iskandar. There were buses provided for the UTP-UiTM trip. I arrived quite early, no, very early in the morning indeed and I got room number 4. Probably the one of the first three candidates who'd registered early. (Room 1-3 were for the Wardens / Petronas' employees). See here? Early bird catches worms. Teehee :D
Some rooms got 4 people, some got 3. i got one Chinese and one Indian as my roommates. 1Malaysia here, I supposed. But it was good for me because I got to talk in English for the following 24 hours as a preparation for the interview. Too bad we didn't take pictures of us together at the end of the Educamp >.<

Since the Briefing started at 2 pm, we had ample of time to mingle around, get to know roomies and also other candidates. Hey, just be friendly :) It'd make you feel less nervous. So, I took a bath and read a rad book about Interview Tips. So nervous wreck I couldn't sleep =.=" Then, we went to UTP's library&hall (coolio!) for the Briefing. Bla bla bla. After having Hi-Tea, we were told to go back to hostel & be prepared for tonight's exam.

So, after taking shower, Erin unpacked her things and started taking out revision books. Ohmygod. Thankfully, I brought along my Physics revision book. Erin was so kind, she even invited me to join her doing revision at some other Chinese's room. Since English was the medium used for our conversation, so I didn't feel left out or something. I managed to skim and memorize the formulaes and I was so relieved. But then, I forgot I didn't study Addmaths so I just skimmed all the formulaes hoping 'this wont come out in the paper' and 'that wont come out in the paper'. You should study earlier seriously. Don't do it on the 11th hour, like me :P

The test took place in a big, air-conditioned Hall, non-technical & technical courses were separated coz the papers were different. The paper was quite easy actually coz neither Integration nor differentiation Qs were asked! Alhamdulillah. Then, we have a Personality test called Value Profiling. Out of all the eduquest's tasks, this was one thing that I loathed the most! They were tricky and the same sentences were repeated twice or thrice. Boring~

After the exams, they informed us on our interview's grouping for tomorrow. GULP. I sank on my chair hoping I'd not be in the same group with anyone I know before. Especially my schoolmates. LOL. And thank God, no one I knew was in my group. And, I was the only girl in it.

AND MY INTERVIEW WAS IN THE MORNING. Darn it =.="

The next day was actually my bad hair day. I just couldn't believe those things happened to me.
I woke up like 4.50 a.m. and headed straight to the shower. Didn't wanna be late. While waiting for Subuh prayer, I tried to put on my contact lenses. Guess what? It got tear apart =.=" Unfortunately, I didn't bring any extras. So I had to wear my glasses which was so NOT COOL.

We headed out for the bus. I didn't bother to find any partner that I'd stick around with the whole day. This was time to get to know more people. Try lah duduk sebelah different people, talk to different people, eat with different people. Ni aku tengok, ada lah sorang tu, kawan dia takde, dia malu nak beratur ambik makanan. Sanggup tak makan. Apa ni? =.=" My interview was Okay lah despite the CRAZY, EMBARASSING incident I went through right before my turn for the individual interview. Don't ask.
I was in group 21-D. Means, I was candidate number 4 in the group. There were Irfan, Iqbal, Tan and Iz-something.

First of all, we sat according to our group, and were given approx. 30 minutes to read the Case Study and brainstorm own ideas. EACH CARD CONSISTED OF SAME CASE STUDY BUT DIFFERENT ASPECTS. Eg. : Since I was 21D, I got Card D, Which was the same problem as Card A, B, C and E received that needed to be solved. But, my card specifically talk about the advantages of Advertising. And others got the disadvantages, The need to do advertising etc etc.

There were also Traffic waves issues, depending on the groups. Randomly distributed, though.

Talking about the Panels, there were two of them, and THEY DID NOT ASK ANYTHING EXCEPT:
1) Tell us briefly about yourself
2) You can present your case study

Honestly, I was feeling a lil bit upset and frustrated because they didn't show that they were interested to know anything about us. Or at least, test our understanding & knowledge of the courses we intended to do. But then, Hey. Ada rezeki, ada lah. insyaAllah.

The group interview was like this. We had to discuss and present our opinions/how to solve the problems/the best way to use. I wasn't the most outstanding candidate here, that should be my sister's junior (Darn it. A guy that knows my sister. I really should get the very best out of me =.=" ) But, I talked, and also gave my opinions, laughed a bit, smiled big time etc etc. Lastly, we needed to come out with our last stand. Should be only one person talking. That'd give marks to Teamworks.

After lunch, we walked to the same hall to take some tests.
1) English Placement Test 1 *- Objective Qs, Preposition
*Pretty much like SPM syllabus, really.

2) English Placement Test 2 *- Understanding. This was quite hard, but looking at everyone struggling their best to answer it, I did my best too.
*There were 60 Qs, each one consisted of 2-paragraph essay. Then, they gave three to five statements below. You have to write either the statements given is True, False or Not Given (the opposite of True & False. Statements that were not even stated in the essay.)

3) Critical Reasoning Test - Have u ever solved any IQ tests? Yup, this was one of a kind :)

That's all. Changing phone numbers and FBs, as usual. Back to the hostel. Packing stuff, took photos and we were done. My friends, Liyana (I met her at Educamp TNB and Exxonmobil's Interview and suprised to know she's the daughter of my mother's classmate in secondary school. What a small world) and also, Ihsan (used to be my neighbour) were riding in my car.

Thank you, and sorry for so many questions. But, do you know how many people will Petronas take? And this year it's called Petronas YoungStars Day, haha, is it the same as educamp that you had participated? And thank you for posting all these stuff, you help so many people! May Allah reward you :D

Petronas select about 80 people for overseas scholarship from about thousands candidates every year.. Yeah they started this Young Star program since last year actually. It is almost the same as educamp, its just that they will cramp everything up in only one day. So you don't really have a lot of rest time. But basically, you will either have all tests in the morning, and interview in the evening or vice versa. Thank you for the du'a. Goodluck, and may Allah bless you too :)

Kak mizaaa i feel like crying right now. I think the interview went bad :( I got the same topic like urs but diff recommendations. Wht do u think if actually i talked more abt the problems and not hightlighting the recmmendations? And at the end of the iv, the interviewrs asked me abt the recommendation. I just give only one opinion but then they asked more. Lastly i told them i couldnt find the exact answer and asked them to proceed with the next ques. They said 'its okay during the group task im sure youll give us more opinions'. Kak mizaaaaaa was it okay? Why did i feel so bad with myself? Wht do u feel after ur i terview? Am i only one feel like this? :(

What's done is done. The only thing you can do right now is to pray to God.. :)

I was confident that I did pretty well in some of the interviews, but I didn't get some of those scholarships... So, sometimes you might think that you screwed it up, but the interviewers actually liked you. Pray so that Allah will soften their hearts and give you good marks for the interviews.

Assalamualaikum, I received the Petronas Scholarship, alhamdulillah --- tak berjaya dapat overseas, local pun boleh :DHaha, btw, my question is; does a local petronas scholar gets the same benefit of the overseas scholar? (Eg: laptop allowance, and attending such awesome events and leadership camps; so I've been told) If you can clarify, I really appreciate it! Thank you :D